Vathal - Purpose

[platointherave]

The air was choking, the ground unfamiliar, the sky was not my own.

All around me, the wind and the rain howled in a way I’d never imagined.

The storm was everywhere.

It was a moment almost entirely alien, save for the Fear. That was familiar.

It oriented me. It was how I knew I had to face the storm, or it would consume me. I had no teeth to bare, but I was ready to fight.

Then the moment passed, like a breath released. I was back in a field, sat across from Ake. The moment was her own, but it was the first time I saw the Force. Not as an abstraction, but as a living moment. Before that instant I had learned that the Force was in all things. That it connected life. I understood the concept, but didn’t believe it. But in the storm, I was present because the parts of life that I am - the fear, the joy, the need to be - are shared by Ake. Shared by all life. Shared by the cosmos. I was, briefly, part of an organism that spanned all things.

It was startling. It scared me. I’ve lived as a rat, for most of my life. Under the heel of Czerka it never seemed like a choice. You’re Hungry. You’re always Hungry. So you take what you need. You fight for what you have. You expect it to be taken from you. There’s no such thing as security, just the endless struggle. The need. The Fear. To know another is to feel their pain, to feel their pain is to hesitate, to hesitate is to die. Empathy for anyone but kin was deadly. So the moment I saw myself in everything, I felt like I’d been poisoned. I was afraid it’d make me weak. Worse, I was afraid it’d rob me of myself.

Ake told me her people go out to the wild places to listen for the Force. They use substances, to empty themselves of Ego. To be grounded in the moment. To be nothing but life, at one with all life. She talked a lot about being grounded. It was what stuck with me most. A foundation I tried to build upon. Ake taught me a lot that day but the meaning I found was this:

The Force, like life, is not about abstraction. It isn’t about getting lost in mysteries. It’s about living in the world. Present, for all things. It’s about being a sincere part of everything. For there is no chaos; there is harmony.

[platointherave]

‘Whatever happens, remember this: you can always, always, change.’

Milo’s a man that lived like me. Hungry. He was an addict, and a thief. Today he’s a Jedi. He lives the Purpose he espouses with sincerity.

Ake and Milo both taught me that the Force makes of you what you make of it. Back then, I thought I knew what I wanted to do with the Force. I thought I wanted to use it. To make it a weapon. To make it a tool that I could use to scramble over all the other rats, and do as I wished. I had no illusions, even then. No self-justifications. No excuses. I unapologetically wanted power. The only thing stopping me from seeking the Sith, to dedicating myself to learning that power, was Milo. He has never, in all the times we have spoken, reduced me. To him, all men are his equal. He invests in each of us the same respect he invests in himself. I’ve heard that value espoused often. I think Vosca is dedicated to living it. Most Jedi are. But perfection is an endless process, and in Milo there’s an understanding that is deep and abiding. Even back then, I admired him very much. So when he spoke, I listened.

To use the Force as a tool is to use the Dark Side. It isn’t the act of pragmatism it looks like from the outside. For the Force is in all things. The world, and the self, are one and the same. To make of the world a tool, is to reduce yourself to one. To bend the world is to bend yourself. It’s painful, in ways that aren’t immediately obvious. It’s an act of self-mutilation. Those that teach the dark side emphasise the importance of passion. I used to wonder why, when drawing on the dark, it was only passions like anger, hate and fear that remain. Life has many passions. Joy. Art. Invention. Dance. Love. Why do those get lost?

It’s rooted in the fundamental Purpose of Sith philosophy. Your soul is one with all the world. To the sensitive, you are aware of that oneness. I think we each must determine what relationship we will have between ourself - the Self - and the world. Your passions are not all passions. They are only your own. To focus on only your own experiences, your own feelings, is to place the Self above the world. It is to be self-absorbed. So, when you act outwardly, it is according only to the Self. Emotions, ways of knowing, might be universal but the passions of the living are varying and often - conflicting. To choose the Self is to choose to place your passions before the passions of others. Conflict is inevitable. Passions like joy, or love, or art are outward looking. They require a relationship with the passions of others. Collaboration. Mutual care. Each of these passions requires, in some small way, a release of Ego. A willingness to let the expressions of someone else move you. Empathy lives in a surrendering of yourself to the expressions of another. So many passions require it, and so, they are poor fuel for the Dark Side. For looking without, letting someone - anyone - else move you is to allow yourself to be subject to the world. Not master. So the only passions that can live, are those that are purely self-focused. Fear. Hate. Anger.

Milo described the day the Force saved him. He tripped, while trying to rob another. He fell. He might have died, had the Force not stopped his fall. He told me that in that moment he saw something beautiful. A oneness with all things. It inspired in him Faith. It’s a common misconception that Jedi reject emotion. That they strive not to feel it. It isn’t emotion they reject, but the placing of their emotion before the emotions of all life. Where the Sith choose a relationship with the world that is self-absorbed, the Jedi choose to be a part of all things. Not to smother what lives in the world, or subject it to themselves, but to be a part of all of it. Milo’s Faith is not one of dogmatic obedience, but sincere experience. He has felt a oneness with all things, and what lives in the world inspires him. Real Faith isn’t an act of iron willed belief. It isn’t an act of rational or pragmatic argument. It’s an act of release. In accepting that there is something greater than oneself, and allowing it to move you. Milo taught me about the dangers of devotion to the Dark. Not by dogma. Not by reducing the world to a struggle between good and evil. But by having Faith in the world, and therefore, having Faith in me. The meaning of that to me is this:

The Force is not absent emotion. It is rich with it, for emotion is in all life. To accept the Force is not to reject emotion, but to accept it. Not only your own, but the emotion of all life. You do not reject what you feel, any more than you reject the lived experiences of all men. But you allow what you feel to be one experience of many. You release the Self, and place Faith in the Force. In all life. For there is no passion, there is serenity.

[platointherave]

‘Strength and Power aren’t the same thing. Power’s easy to claim, and easy to lose. Strength is something that lasts.’

Teth is the Jedi I want to be.

He lived in the dark for a long, long, time. I think he believed it was his strength. He was the one that showed me how to use the Dark Side. How to deepen my Fear. How to make it Anger. How to lash out. When I first struck another with the Force, he was pleased, but he also wanted me to learn something. That though my emotions were powerful, they must not rule me. I must make them subject to my Purpose. He taught me discipline. To Teth, the Dark Side was not something to give in to. It was something to control, to use. At the time I had begun to believe a popular lie amongst Sith: that the Dark Side could be mastered. That I could be the first. The truest Sith. To use the Dark Side without it consuming me. To be nothing but my Purpose.

It’s a hollow ideal, made impossible by the very nature of the Dark Side. I think it’s easy to make excuses. To lie to yourself, about being different. About knowing better. To use the Dark is to compromise your Purpose, for the self-absorbed don’t live in the world. They cannot act on it with Purpose any longer. You can step back. Walk away from it. But each day you compromise, is a day you risk losing your grasp on Purpose. Teth walked through the Dark, and didn’t lose his grasp. He would have, eventually. Surely. But he possessed it. All of it. He could have been a conqueror. But he saw it for what it was. Power, not strength. Power lives not in a man’s Purpose, but in abstraction. It is something that exists only as a tool, and so, it makes tools of men. Strength is something you grow. Slowly, and surely. It is a thing of sincerity, applied to a lived Purpose. You can’t grow strong if you reject the world. If you place yourself above it. You have to grow with the world. Slowly, but certainly.

Teth recognised that. He released all of his Power. His grasp on the Dark, and left it behind. I think had Teth not freed himself, I would still be in the Dark. I’d still be trying to grasp an illusion. Teth’s the strongest man I know. Not because he has power, but because he took hold of the Dark, and then let it go. He found in himself real strength, because he found in himself a connection to the world. The night I watched him let go, and place his Faith in the world around him, was the night I knew for certain what I wanted. It was the first night I walked without Fear. Every Jedi must know the dark within themselves. They must understand it, acknowledge it, and then master it.

Teth’s darkness ran deeper than most, but still, he mastered it. Then he let it go. Not at sword point. Not because he lost, like so many other Sith that turned from the Dark. But because he found his Purpose - the world - truer and greater.

Teth might not call himself as Jedi today. He might not even know he is one. But to me, he made the most essential choice a Jedi must make. To let go of Power and place Faith in the world.